


Brush With Death

by DesertScribe



Category: Original Work
Genre: But Not Human Zombies, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 19:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16456070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: The zombie uprising has begun, but it's not dead humans who are coming back to life.





	Brush With Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rollcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rollcake/gifts).



Once upon a time, there was a happy (some might even say overly cheerful) toothbrush named Buzzy.

She was an electric toothbrush, and not just any electric toothbrush but one rated by Consumer Reports as the best little electric toothbrush money could buy in her price range. She removed plaque and massaged gums just as well as fancier electric toothbrushes which cost more than five times as much as she did. She had a pretty blue and white handle with a rubberized ergonomic grip, and she always went about her work with a happy little hum like a cat's purr played on fast-forward. 

However, nothing lasts forever, not even sturdily built appliances like Buzzy who had been happily operating years beyond her end of warranty without any sign of wear and tear, and one day her recharging circuit failed, never to function again. Then, on a not-so ordinary morning a week later, when Steve, her owner, picked Buzzy up from where she had spent Sunday night on her charging stand just like every week, the stand's light glowed a sullen red in warning of a malfunction instead of its usual perky green of a full charge.

Steve did not notice this unfortunate occurrence for a variety of reasons. When he first got up, he was too groggy and sleep deprived thanks to being woken from a sound sleep by what sounded like an explosion hours before his alarm was due to go off. Then, as he went about his morning routine, he was too distracted by news reports on the radio about a previously unknown large comet-like object which had gone streaking through the planet's atmosphere without any warning in the early hours, scattering sonic-booms and strange but seemingly harmless radiation in its wake all across the skies of the western hemisphere. And finally, Steve did not notice because, despite lacking the electrical charge which should have been necessary for her to do so, Buzzy still sprang to bristle-rotating life when he pressed her on-button.

She still cleaned Steve's teeth just as well. Perhaps her hum as she worked was a half tone more sullen than it had been before, but that kind of a change was to be expected when she had been altered on the very core level of her being. In Buzzy's previous existence, she had been powered by electricity and optimism. Now her battery was cold and empty and dead, yet still she functioned. She had become a zombie toothbrush, and instead of yearning for the satisfaction of a job well done as she had before, she hungered for brains.

Buzzy no longer cared that she was removing harmful oral bacteria and food particles leftover from breakfast, helping to prevent future tooth decay as Steve moved her rotating head across every possible square millimeter of exposed enamel. All she could focus on was the fact that Steve's delicious-smelling brains were mere inches away yet still infinitely out of reach, hidden behind the bone of the roof of his mouth, too thick for her to penetrate on her own. She gnashed her bristles harder in frustration and raised a faint seepage of blood from Steve's gums for her efforts. The blood was tasty enough, but it did nothing to lessen the hunger which Buzzy's new instincts insisted could only be satisfied by brains.

If Steve noticed the faint stinging in his mouth at all, he attributed it to having burned himself on the hot eggs he ate for breakfast just a few minutes earlier.

Suddenly, a long, panicked scream pierced the air, and that did get a reaction where Buzzy's attempt at eating her owner did not.

Steve whipped around to look out his bathroom window in time to see Bob, one of his neighbors from the next street over, being chased down the sidewalk by what appeared to be a somewhat older model refrigerator, rolling along on its tiny metal wheels at ungodly speeds. Little did Steve know, cheapskate Bob's continued refusal to do anything about replacing his refrigerator's slowly dying compressor before it was absolutely necessary had literally come back to bite him in the ass. Its two doors flapped open and closed like a pair of hungry maws, and as Steve watched, the refrigerator caught up to Bob and snapped shut around him. The freezer ate his head, and the main compartment ate the rest of him.

Steve staggered away from the window in horror, with toothpaste foam dribbling unnoticed out of his slack jaw as he did so.

Buzzy seethed in jealousy that the freezer was able to eat someone's brains while she couldn't.

Before Steve had time to process what he had just witnessed, another scream split the air, this one less human and more like a chainsaw cutting through the door into Steve's house from his garage. In fact, that's exactly what it was. Specifically, it was the old chainsaw whose motor had seized and refused to start again the last time Steve had tried to use it, forcing him to bring out his handsaw to finish pruning the tree in his yard. He had left the chainsaw in his garage with the intention of trying to fix it someday, but he didn't have need of a chainsaw very often and didn't actually know anything about fixing them, so there it had stayed. Until now, that is. Now it was back from the dead along with all the rest of the world's appliances, and it planned to sink its teeth into the nearest thing that was warmer and tastier than any tree or other piece of wood, namely Steve.

Unluckily for Steve, he did not have time to put together the few facts in his possession and deduce the origin story of his now zombie chainsaw. All he had time to do was unconsciously react to being confronted with a terrible screeching which was coming from within his own home and sounding like it was drawing even closer still, all immediately after witnessing the death of his neighbor by previously unheard-of means. Because he was half-dressed and without any potential weapon in view bigger than the toothbrush clutched in his hand (Steve didn't know it, but his toothbrush was a better weapon than he could possibly dream. Or, at least, she wanted to be. Buzzy was small, but she was fierce now, so very fierce! She swore to herself that she would fight the chainsaw when it came, because she knew it would try to keep all of Steve's brains for itself once it opened his head.) Steve's fight-or-flight response skipped straight to flight without pausing to consult with any of his conscious or semi-conscious thought processes.

That would be Steve's downfall, literally.

He unthinkingly bolted out of the bathroom. Or, at least, he tried to. Steve's first step tangled his foot in his bathmat, and as he tried to recover from that, his other foot landed in the puddle of toothpaste foam which he had so recently drooled onto the flood without realizing it. His flailing for balance only made things worse. His bathmat-tangled foot slid out behind him while his toothpaste-y foot slid out to the side, leaving neither foot in a position to be brought forward in time to catch Steve as he pitched face first towards the floor.

He tried to catch himself with his forearms, and in the split second before he landed, Buzzy, still clenched tight in his right fist, saw her moment of opportunity. She was already pointing in the right direction, base down and head up. It was as if fate wanted this for Buzzy and all she needed to do was reach out and take it. So, take it she did. She heaved herself to the left against Steve's hand so that she would be almost perfectly centered on Steve's face as he came down. Gravity did the rest.

The last thing Steve ever saw was the tiles of his bathroom floor, his own hands, and his electric toothbrush all apparently rising up to meet him. Then everything went dark, and Steve died before he even had a chance to process the fact that he had just jammed nearly the entire length of his electric toothbrush up his nose. It was just as well that he did. There are some things that people are better off not knowing.

The ultimate destination of a human soul when it departs from this world cannot be known by anyone who remains behind. Buzzy, however, was deep in Steve's brain, just like she had wanted ever since awakening to this unearthly hunger, and therefore she was in heaven.

The scream of the chainsaw grew louder as it pulled itself up the stairs with the teeth of its blade, like a legless hound baying for blood as it followed the scent of its prey. Buzzy would need to work fast if she wanted to get her fill of brains before the chainsaw arrived. Luckily for her, she had always been an efficient little toothbrush, and she remained so even in reanimated un-death.

With a happy little hum that was even more like a cat's purr than usual because now she was doing it while eating meat, Buzzy feasted.

**The End**


End file.
